


Mud Stains

by EmmaArthur



Series: Whumptober 2019 [9]
Category: Roswell New Mexico (TV 2019)
Genre: Alex Whump, At least in this part, Graphic, Heavy Angst, Jesse Manes is a War Crime, Kidnapping, M/M, Really Bad Whump, Torture, Violence, Whumptober, hurt and no comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-11
Updated: 2019-10-11
Packaged: 2020-12-09 10:55:02
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,371
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20993642
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EmmaArthur/pseuds/EmmaArthur
Summary: Jesse Manes escapes the hospital, and abducts his son. Michael will do anything to find Alex





	Mud Stains

**Author's Note:**

> Whumptober day 9: **Shackled**.
> 
> I'm three days late, but there it is. Heed the warnings, it's very dark.
> 
> [torture, graphic violence, kidnapping, prison, violent deaths/killing, loss of control, serious injuries, blood]

Michael frowns at his ringing phone when he sees Valenti's name as the caller ID. He only has Valenti's number saved in his phone because Isobel made him, since Valenti is the only doctor they have in case of an emergency, but they've never even texted each other.

“What?” he asks brusquely as he picks up the call.

“Is Alex with you?” Valenti asks, sounding worried. “I can't reach him.”

“No, we haven't spoken since last night,” Michael answers. They're taking their relationship slow, since the mess with Maria. They're trying to date and actually talk, in the middle of the government conspiracy craziness, and one of their rules is no using sex to avoid talking. That means that they avoid staying overnight at each other's place. “Why ? What's wrong ?”

“I don't know, something's not adding up,” Valenti says. “He was supposed to be at the bunker an hour ago, and his phone goes straight to voicemail. And we have a huge problem.”

“What is it?”

“Jesse Manes escaped the hospital sometime yesterday, probably early morning. It was my day off, the first time I haven't checked on him in five weeks, and he somehow woke up enough to walk out and disappear.”

“Shit!” Michael exclaims. “Does Alex know?”

“Not yet. That's why I'm worried. I'm on my way to his place, but you're closer. Meet me there?”

Michael stands up and starts putting on his boots one-handed, the other holding his phone to his ear. “Yeah, leaving now,” he says.

“Thanks,” Valenti says before hanging up.

Michael makes it to Alex's cabin in record time. He tried to call Alex's phone twice on the way, but there's no answer. By the time he pulls up in the driveway, he's so worried his knuckles are white from gripping the wheel.

Things have been quiet for a while, which just made Michael wait for the other shoe to drop. Nothing in his life has ever been easy, so why would it start now?

They're still grieving for Max, though they've all given up hope of reviving him. He was too far gone by the time Liz managed to get him to his pod, and nothing they've tried has worked. They haven't held a funeral yet, but even Isobel has accepted that it's over.

The grief has been brutal. Where Liz obsessed over bringing Max back, working days and nights in her lab, and Isobel isolated herself from everyone and slept fifteen hours a day, Michael took a downward slope into self-destruction, chucking down tequila and acetone by the bottle, destroying what was left of his relationship with Alex to casually sleep with Maria and breaking both of their hearts over and over. He's come out of it now, mostly, even though Maria won't talk to him and Alex is still tentative and guarded. But things are looking up−and that's exactly why it couldn't go on.

That's why Michael knows long before he sees the signs of a fight in Alex's cabin that Jesse Manes made it here before he did.

There are mud tracks all over the floor in front of the cabin, as if someone drove all the way up here and then sped off. It's probably what happened, Michael thinks when he sees the door hanging off its hinges, wide open. The whole room inside looks like a hurricane has been through it. The couch is overturned, and the coffee table broken to pieces.

“What the hell?” Valenti murmurs when he joins Michael to look at the wreckage.

“Alex put up a fight,” Michael says. “But his father definitely wasn't alone. They're gone.”

Alex lets himself slide down to the floor as the Airman pushes him into the cell. There's little else he can do. The shackles don't let him lie down fully, so he has to curl up on himself, the chains linking his wrists and ankles clicking as he moves.

The cell doesn't have a window, but at least a day has passed since four Airmen showed up at him door, ordering him to come with them. He almost obeyed, before he opened the door fully to see his father in the passenger seat of the waiting Jeep. He fought tooth and nail, but it just wasn't enough against four able-bodied trained men.

He has a badly broken arm and a concussion from hell to show for it. He doesn't know how long it took his father and his minions−because that's, clearly, what they are−to get him here, in what looks like another abandoned prison reworked for Project Shepard's uses. It certainly wasn't on any files that Alex has seen, and he doesn't even know in which state they are.

Which means that no one is coming for him. Michael or Kyle might worry that he's not answering his phone, but they won't have anywhere to look for him. If Alex didn't find out about this place, from his father's bunker or the Caulfield data, then they won't either.

So Alex bides his time. He's in no shape to try to escape, even if he wasn't in an airtight cell inside an airtight prison. His right arm has gone numb below his elbow, and even just shifting his shoulder makes him scream. His head is still bleeding, and he's so dizzy he can barely tell up from down. His stump is on fire, but he doesn't dare remove the prosthetic in case he gets a chance to run. Not that he'll be able to run in shackles. Alex doesn't know why they even cuffed the damn prosthetic rather than removing it, except perhaps so they don't have to carry him everywhere.

And then, there's the interrogation sessions. Three so far, and counting. Jesse Manes knows better than anyone that Alex is trained in counter-interrogation−he's the reason Alex passed that particular test with flying colors on his first try−so he stepped up his game from the beginning. He started with waterboarding, which just made Alex's head wound worse and ended with him to woozy to tell his father what he wants, so now it's just mind games. Threats. Detailed accounts of what he'll do to Michael once he puts his hands on him. More creative every time.

“_What do the aliens know about Project Shepard?”_

Alex's mouth is bloody from biting his tongue. He's almost out of his mind with pain. One of his captors uncuffed his arms only to tie them above his head, and the broken one is sending  sharp spikes that have already made him throw up all over himself. Jesse just gave him a disgusted look and stepped further back.

“_What's their plan?”_

In the cell, the  noise starts. Alex knows the technique: sleep deprivation. The speakers screams heavy metal at him, songs that he might even have enjoyed if he didn't feel like tearing his head off. He shivers uncontrollably, drenched from the water they threw at him to keep him awake.

He doesn't wonder whether his father will go all the way with the torture. Jesse Manes would rather see his son dead than alive and causing him problems, and he will kill anyone who stands in his way without hesitation. Even Alex.

He does wonder if death would be better than this.

_No_ .  _Keep them occupied. Keep them away from the others. From Michael._

Alex will hold on as long as he can, to give the others a chance.

He hopes they won't waste that chance trying to save him.

It takes nearly five days of gripping fear to even get their first lead. Michael spends them stone-cold sober, because he can't afford to spend a single thought on anything that's not Alex, let alone get himself inebriated. He bites his nails to the blood before he starts pulling at his skin, at his lips, at his hair. None of that helps  with the crushing anxiety that constricts his stomach.

Alex has been kidnapped by his father, and Michael knows exactly how much of a monster Jesse Manes is. He sees it every time he closes his eyes, the skeletal prisoners behind glass taking Alex's features, and Alex's hand under the hammer, Alex's face as his father tried to choke him.

If Michael doesn't make it to him in time, Alex will die at the hands of his father. Maybe he's already dead. Every day a little more hope flies away, and Michael is left with more angst.

The others are scrambling too, doing their best, but it's not enough. Kyle and  Rosa spend their days down in Manes's bunker, going through everything Alex might have missed−but they already know Alex didn't miss anything.  Michael, Liz and Maria ride out to every abandoned place they can find around the town to no avail. Isobel approaches as many Airmen as she can to scan their minds without them noticing.

Their first break comes from there: the names of four Airmen declared AWOL on the day Alex got abducted. It's a lead, but it's not enough. It doesn't give them a location.

What it gives Michael is more nightmares. Those men are specifically trained in interrogation methods. With Jesse Manes ruthlessness, God only knows what they might be doing to Alex.

They don't get anything actionable until day six, though, and it comes from a source they didn't expect at all. At dawn on the sixth day, Kyle receives a call at the hospital from Flint Manes.

“He's going to kill Alex,” Flint says. “I can't let him go through with it.”

He gives them the location of another abandoned prison, at the Arizona border. He tells them that he refused to get involved, months ago, when his father planned to take out Kyle and deal with Alex, so Jesse Manes didn't tell him what he was doing, but he's apparently so far gone in his blood lust that he called Flint to brag about torturing his brother.

No six-hour drive has ever felt so long to Michael.

Between Michael and Isobel's powers, getting into the prison isn't complicated. Isobel encourages the one man who comes out to meet them to think of them as military officials, and although it doesn't work for long, it gets them through the doors. Michael sends the man into a wall to knock him out the moment he gives signs of turning on them.

After that, he focuses on finding Alex. He tried hard not to think of what state Alex is going to be in. He was still alive last night when Jesse Manes talked to Flint. That's enough for Michael.

Except it's not. Not when he turns a corner and sees him.

They've spread out over the prison to cover every floor, so they can find Alex faster. Flint is certain that Jesse Manes is there with only the four Airmen, that the prison was truly abandoned years ago, so they don't expect to have to take on an army. Even Caulfield barely had any staff, despite the number of prisoners, Michael remembers. This prison only has one prisoner.

Michael is the one who finds them. He's taken the west wing of the first floor, with Flint covering the east, as they're the two with the most firepower. Michael runs through the corridors as fast as he can, not caring about being discreet, and he stops short at the entrance of what must have been a laundry room.

It's been repurposed as a torture chamber, apparently. Jesse Manes and his three remaining Airmen are standing with their back to him, but Michael barely pays attention to them, beside flicking their guns out of their hands.

In the middle of the room, Alex hangs from a chain  that comes down from the ceiling, binding his wrists above his head. Michael's brain immediately starts cataloging injuries, but there are too many to count. His face and his tattered clothes are drenched in blood, and Michael can't even see where it comes from.  Shackles encircle his ankles, the prosthetic one obviously angled wrong, the wrist cuffs hanging open. Alex's eyes are closed, and he looks already dead.

“Alex!” he shouts.

Alex barely reacts, just opening his eyes a little. Michael runs to him, spreading his arms to throw the four Airmen out of his way. “Alex!”

“Michael,” Alex murmurs through bloody teeth, when Michael reaches him. It's all he can say, though, before his eyes roll back into his head. Michael only has time to untie the chain, catching Alex with his power and his arms so he doesn't fall to brutally, before Alex starts seizing.

“Alex!” Michael cries out, even more desperately. He's finally found him, but it may well be too late. Alex keeps shaking in his arms, his whole body moving uncontrollably.

It lasts maybe a minute, a minute out of time. Nothing else in the room moves, whether the men are afraid of Michael or he knocked them unconscious. Until Jesse Manes stands up.

“Get away from my son, _monster_!” he exclaims.

Michael loses it.

“I'm the monster, am I?” he says through gritted teeth. “I'll show you a monster.”

Still cradling Alex 's now still body in his lap,  kneeling on the dirty, bloody floor, he buries his head into Alex's chest−barely moving, but he can hear a faint heartbeat−and he lets go.

He lets go of ten years of pain and anger. Of six days of the worst fear he can imagine. Of all the  _rage_ inside him.

It's a hurricane.

He can  _feel_ their neck snap. He can feel it all, the destruction, the violence, the death. It feeds him. The body are whirling around him and Alex and he can feel the foundations of the building itself, where to push to make it collapse, to destroy it all.

He hears, at the edge of his perception, cries from voices he recognizes, but he can't make out what they say. He's too far gone for words. The floor starts shaking.

A hand grips his arm weakly. “Michael,” Alex breathes into his ear. “Stop.”

Sobbing, Michael closes his hand, and the hurricane stops. 

“Thank you,” Alex murmurs, before he closes his eyes and loses consciousness. 

**Author's Note:**

> This is the first of a series, Stains, that should have five parts in total. The rest will be pretty dark too, but will focus on Alex's recovery, starting with the next prompt, Unconscious (whenever I manage to catch up, hopefully tomorrow).


End file.
